The other day, an old cook I'd temporarily engaged brought me some beaten and puffed rice. "It is from our family's own land in Bokaro," she said proudly. "This was a decent year for our rice crop, and my son has brought back enough from the village to last us for the whole year." As we got chatting about her family back home, she mentioned something that I've heard many villagers speak of with great pride. "We've always been able to live off our land, and have never needed to buy any food grain," she said. "Our grain coffers in the village house are always full. And every time anyone comes to Delhi from my village, my family sends sacks full of grain for me as well," she said. As the 60-year-old got ready to go off to the two other homes where she worked, I became increasingly curious about her life. Given that her family in Jharkhand seemed so well off, surely the arthritic old woman did not need to work so hard. Finally, I just had to ask her why she did not simply live off her agricultural income now that she was too old to work. Her answer made me realise how uncertain the lives of farmers can be, especially if they have to bank on their incomes from agriculture alone.
"Our paddy crop is good only maybe three times out of five," she said. "When the harvest is good, life that year is wonderful. We have ready cash flow and plenty to eat." However, when the crop fails, the deprivation farmers' families undergo is unspeakable. "It was one such year when we had to migrate to Delhi in search of work," she recalled. The rains had been scant, and her father-in-law fell ill. "In a barter economy such as ours, all is well as long as you don't need to buy anything," she said. The family had nothing to sell, and their savings dried up with the spiralling medical bills.
"My husband and I were forced to come to Delhi to work to send money home to the family," she said. Her father-in-law died months later, but the family requested her husband to stay on in Delhi so that there would always be some cash available to them as a fallback option. It was the same story, she said, among all the families in her village. "Over time, every family has sent at least one son to the city to offset some of the uncertainty in their lives," she said.
"Farmers in our area have always depended on the rains for irrigation. Our main crop is rice, which needs watering at precise junctures after it has been sowed," she explained. Over the last decade, the monsoon had become increasingly erratic and consequently, the farmers' fortunes. Crop failure had resulted in the loss of so many lives and opportunities in her village that eligible girls no longer wanted to marry farmers. I asked whether any of them practised inter-cropping to hedge their bets on rice. Also, I asked if they used indigenous seed varieties - they were more drought- and pest-resistant.
"I no longer know about the technicalities of farming for I belong to the city now," she smiled ruefully. "Although my husband died five years ago, I am still the family's cash cow, sending them money as and when they need it." Did she miss that connection to the land, I asked. "Whenever I eat the rice from our land, it reminds me of home and the life I once had. But it also reminds me how unstable life is when you don't earn money, and I'm grateful to be working in Delhi."
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